Here Lies Arthur (2 page)

II

 

The first shock of that cold water jarred my teeth and made my lungs go tight. I surfaced in the shadows under the bridge, and heard the boy above me, screaming curses at his horse. I turned circles, paddling with my hands. This mouse could swim. Raised near the river, I’d been in and out of it as long as I could remember. In summer me and the other children of the place came down at evening when the day’s work ended to splash and shout until the light died. In autumn, master had me dive in to set his fish-traps. Open-eyed in the hubble and swirl below the rapids, I’d wedge the long wicker creels in place, then lift them out later full of plump, speckled fish.

So I took a deep breath and dived, kicking out hard, letting the river drag me away from sword-boy. Gritty water pressed against my eyes. I could see only darkness, with here and there an orange fire-gleam slanting down. It was easier to find my way by touch. I pawed over slimy boulders to the first bend below the
bridge and came up for air, yelping and gasping in the clatter of the rapids. The current tugged at me, reminding me of all the things that haunt rivers, ready to drag unwary children under with their long, green hands. I was scared of them, but the raiders scared me more.

I slid down into a calmer pool and trod water there, listening for the sounds of battle. There was nothing, only the voices of the river and the woods. Far off, the farm where I’d grown up was burning like a dropped torch. I wondered if all master’s household were dead. There had been no love between me and them – I was just a hanger-on, the whelp of some dead slave-woman. But still that farmstead was the only home I’d known. Out of pity for myself I cried and cried, adding my tears to the river till the cold clutched and shook me and set all my teeth a-rattle.

At last, just to keep warm, I started swimming again. Downstream, letting the river do the work. I kept my head above the surface this time. If you’d been watching from the bank you’d think you’d seen an otter, scared from its hole by the fighting upriver and heading for quieter fishing grounds. I swam until the trees parted above me to let the sky show and the river widened into a deep pool. Another river joined it there, coming down off the moors and tipping into the pool in a long fall, pale in the moonshine like an old man’s beard.

There, cold as a ghost, wet as a drowned dog, I came ashore, heaving myself out by the tangle of tree-roots that reached out of the bank. I flopped into the litter of beechmast and dead leaves between the trees and made
a little ball of myself, trying to hug some warmth back into my juddering, shuddering limbs. The noise of the water filled my head. Where would I go now? What would I eat? Who would I serve? I didn’t know. Didn’t care either. There was no more feeling left in me than in a hearthful of cold ashes. When feet came scuffing through the fallen leaves and stopped beside me I didn’t even look up, just knelt there, shivering.

III

 

It was dark under those trees. I couldn’t see the man who lifted me and carried me away from the pool. I couldn’t see his waiting horse, though I felt it snort and stamp when he hung me over its saddle like a blanket-roll. I didn’t see him till we reached shelter. It was an old building from the Roman times, big and pale in the owl-light, half sunk in furze and trees. He led the horse right inside, and small, loose tiles slid and scraped beneath its hooves as if the place was floored with teeth, or knucklebones. He lifted me down from the horse’s back and laid me in a corner. I was too scared to look at him. He moved about quietly, kindling a fire. Big shadows shifted across the walls. Traces of paint clung to the plaster. Ivy hung down thick through the rotted cage of rafters overhead, rustly and whispering. I squinched my eyes shut. I thought if I was small enough, and still enough, and quiet enough, he might forget me.

“Hungry?” he asked.

I opened one eye. He was crouching by me. He wore
a shabby black travelling cloak fastened with a flashy, complicated brooch. A jangle of charms and amulets hung round his neck. Horse charms, moon charms, paw of a hare. Magic things. In the shadow of his hood his face gave away no secrets. Sallow, sharp-nosed, beardless. Was he a priest? He wasn’t dressed like one, but I’d never seen a man clean-shaved who wasn’t a priest or a high-born warrior, and this was no warrior. Fine-boned like a hawk, he looked. Quick and birdy in his movements too. And his eyes were hawk’s eyes, patient and clever.

What did he want with me?

“Hungry?” he asked again. He stretched out the palm of his hand towards me and suddenly a hunk of bread was between his fingers. I shuffled backwards, pressing my spine against the wall. I was afraid of him and his magic bread.

He laughed. “It’s only a trick, girl. Look close.” He folded his hand over the bread and when he opened it again the bread was gone. He waggled his fingers and the bread was back. It perched on his palm like a baby bird. He held it towards me again but I closed my mouth tight and turned my face away. I didn’t know much but I knew to fear magic.

Another laugh. A ripply sound, like water running in the first thaw of spring. “Scared it’ll make you sleep a thousand years? Or witch you away to my kingdom under the hill?” He pushed the bread back inside his clothes and went about his business. He took a saddlebag from his horse and opened it, pulling out a cooking pot, a sack of food, a stained old blanket that he
wrapped around me. All the time he talked to me softly, the way a farrier whispers to a scared horse.

“I’m as mortal as you, girl. I am Myrddin. The bard Myrddin. You know what a bard is, don’t you, girl? A traveller and spinner of tales. There’s my harp, bundled in oilcloth, see? It was
I
who thought
you
came from the otherworld. Creeping out of the lake like that. You must swim like a fish. I thought you were the lake-woman herself, come up from her home under the waters to steal my heart away. But you’re a little young yet, aren’t you, to be stealing anything but apples and barley cakes? How many summers have you seen? Nine? Ten?”

I managed a shivery shrug. Nobody had ever told me how old I was. Nobody had ever asked before.

“And have you a name?” He crouched down again on the far side of the fire and watched me. He threw back his hood, baring cropped, greying hair. The flame light stroked his face and gleamed in his eyes. He wore a look you could have taken for kindness.

“Gwyna,” I said.

“So you can speak! And where have you come from, Gwyna?”

“From my master’s farm. Up that way.” I pointed with my head. My voice sounded very small and dull compared with his, as though the river-water had washed all the colour out of it. But it made the lights in his eyes flare up like embers when a breeze catches them.

“You’ve come from Ban’s place?”

I nodded numbly. Ban was my master’s master: lord of the fort on the hill above my burned home, and all the lands you could see from that hill.

“But it must be miles from here…”

“Not so far by river,” I said. “I swam all the way.”

“Like a fish.” He was looking at me different now. I started to feel pleased. Nobody had ever cared much what I was or did before.

“I swum under water half of it,” I said. (I didn’t know it then, but I was sealing my fate with that silly boast.) “It’s my job to set the fish-traps at fall-of-leaf. The cold don’t worry me. I can open my eyes down under water and I can hold my breath…”

“How long? Show me?”

I gulped in a great breath and sealed my lips tight behind it. I watched him, and he watched me. Blood thumped in my neck, and the back of my head. I felt proud of myself. It was easy. I couldn’t see why people bothered breathing, it was so easy to get by without. And still this Myrddin watched me. After a while the breath I’d taken started to grow stale inside. A bit of it seeped out my nose. The dam of my lips cracked, letting out more. I gasped, and the game was over, and still he was watching me.

“Better and better,” he said. “Perhaps the spirits of the lake did send you to me, after all.”

“Oh no, sir! It was the burning, and the riders…”

I stopped. Here by the warmth of his fire the battle seemed far off and strange, like a dream I’d had. But I hadn’t dreamed it. Outside, the sky was turning pale above the bare branches. Birds were stirring. Day was brewing. “Oh sir!” I said, “They came with fire and swords and horses! They came killing and burning and hollering!”

Myrddin wasn’t worried. “That is the way of the world, Gwyna. It has been so ever since the legions sailed away.”

“But they’ll come here! We must hide! We must run!”

“Peace, child!” he said, and he laughed. He caught me by both shoulders as I tried to scramble to the door. His horse sensed my fear and whinnied softly, stirring its tail, wafting a smell of dung towards us. Myrddin said, “You’ve nothing to fear. Not now. Not if you’re with me.” He sat me down again, shushing and crooning to calm me. “You know who those riders are, Gwyna? They are the war-band of Arthur. You’ve heard of Arthur, haven’t you?”

Well of course I had. I never thought to meet him in my own woods, though. Arthur was someone out of stories. He fought giants and rescued maidens and outfoxed the Devil. He didn’t ride about burning people’s shippens down.

I said, “It can’t be. What would he want here?”

Myrddin laughed and scratched his chin, as if he was trying to work out the easiest answer to that one. At last he said, “Arthur offered your Lord Ban his protection, in exchange for gold and other tributes. But Ban thought the price too high, and refused. That was foolish of him. Now Arthur has come to take Ban’s holdings for himself. And he looks to me to help him do it. I ride with Arthur’s band, see. I spin tales for him, and about him. I parted from him a few days since and came here by a different way, scouting out the land. If you know how the land lies a battle can be half won before it’s started. Sometimes there’s no need for a battle at all.”

I took a moment to understand what he’d said. When I did, I was scared of him all over anew. What had I done, to make God deliver me up to a friend of the raiders?

“You’ve turned paler than porridge,” he said. “But you’ve nothing to fear from me, and nothing from the Bear either. It’ll make no odds to you who your lord is. Except that if I can make Arthur strong enough there might be peace again, like our grandfathers’ fathers knew back in the days when Rome held this island. Strength like Arthur’s could be used for good, see, just as the strength of old Rome was. That’s why I help him, Gwyna. And I have a sense that you can help him too.”

IV

 

He talked and talked while I sat drying out beside his fire, and the grey day brightened grudgingly above the woods. He was in love with words. He found his own conversation so interesting he didn’t notice that he was the only one talking. I just sat watching, listening, while he spoke of places I’d never heard of: Elmet and Rheged, Ireland across the sea, Din Tagyll where the ships from Syria put in. Oh, I snatched a few familiar names out of the word-storm. I’d heard of bad King Gworthigern, who let the heathen Saxons settle in the east, and how they rose up and tried to steal the rest of Britain too. And I knew a song about Ambrosius Aurelianus, who led the armies of the Britons through battle after battle until he smashed those Saxons flat at Badon Hill. But mostly Myrddin’s words flowed past my ears like water.

“When Ambrosius died,” he said, “there was no man strong enough to take his place. The army he built to fight the Saxons came apart into a hundred different war-bands. Now they fight each other, and leave the
Saxons sitting tight upon the lands they stole in the eastern half of Britain. Some of those war-bands serve the small kings of the hill-country. Some serve the big kings of Dumnonia and Powys and Calchvynydd. Some are landless men, loyal only to their captain, grabbing loot and territory where they may. Arthur’s band is like that. But Arthur’s is the best, and one day, with my help, Arthur will be leader over all the rest as well. Then he can finish what Ambrosius started: push east and drive the Saxons into the sea.”

I was only half listening. I was more interested in the stew Myrddin cooked up while he talked. I’d never thought I’d see a nobleman cook his own food. It was watery stuff, flavoured with onions, and dry meat a-bob in it. I ate all I could and then fell asleep, propped up in a corner with my head on my scabbed knees. In my dreams the woods were still on fire.

V

 

Woken by voices, I jumped up. I’d slept the day away. Afternoon sunlight bled down through the mat of weeds and wormy rafters overhead and made patches on the floor. The horse was half asleep, head down. Out among the trees two men were talking. One was my new friend, or master, or whatever he was. The other I did not know.

I crept past the horse and peeked. In the shade of the trees that grew around the old house’s door stood another horse, a white one with a mane the colour of old snow. A man sat on it, looking down at Myrddin. The newcomer was a warrior, with a leather breastplate, and a sword at his side. His thick, red cloak had run in the rain, dribbling pink stains down his horse’s rump. His helmet was off, and his sandy hair stirred in the breeze.

I went closer. I didn’t think I’d be noticed. Noblemen don’t notice people like me, any more than they notice the stray dogs and cats that flit around their halls. I
heard the newcomer say, “The Irishman is on his way. He’ll bring all the men he can muster, and ours are tired after the fight. If it comes to a battle…”

“It will not come to that,” Myrddin promised. “Don’t you trust me, Cei?”

“Not an inch,” said the rider, laughing. Something made him glance my way, and he started as he caught sight of my face watching him from the shadows. Then he kicked his horse’s flanks and turned it away. It looked strong and fast, that horse. It had been well looked after, and well fed on other people’s hay.

“We meet at the river, then?” I heard the rider shout.

“The pool above the ford,” called Myrddin, one hand up, waving, as the rider went away between the trees. “Where the waterfall is.”

As the hoof beats faded he turned and saw me watching. He came towards me smiling, and I was still so little used to being smiled at that I just stood there basking in it till he reached me. He took me by one arm and pushed me back inside. “There is work to be done, Gwyna.”

I looked at the dark loaves of dung his horse had dropped on the floor. I wondered if he wanted it cleaned up.

“Didn’t I say you’d help me help the Bear?” he said. “Arthur needs a sign. There’s an Irishman who rules those wet moors that rise up south of here. He’s Ban’s man, and if he chooses to avenge his overlord it will be a hard strife, and a waste of good men. Better for everyone if he can just welcome Arthur as his lord in Ban’s place. Arthur could use an ally here in the west.
I’ve spoken with the Irishman, and he’s agreeable. But his people won’t trust a man who carries the sign of Christ on his shield. The ways of the new God lie thin in those hills of his, like first snow. Just a pretty coverlet. Dig a little and you soon find old ways and old gods underneath.”

I shivered. It must be bad luck, I thought, to talk so carelessly about gods. I crossed myself, and made the sign against evil. I didn’t want to anger any gods, not new nor old.

“So the old gods are going to make Arthur a present,” Myrddin went on, fumbling among the furs and cloths behind his saddle. “A sign to show they are on Arthur’s side.”

“What sort of sign?” I asked, afraid.

“I’ll show you.”

His quick hands undid the fastenings on a long bundle of oilcloth. Something golden caught the light. A sword hilt. I’d not seen many swords, but I knew enough to know this one was special. The pommel and the crosspiece were red gold, inlaid with swirls and curls of paler metal. The hilt was twisted round with silver wire. The blade shone like water in the folds of the cloth.

“Swords are important to the Bear,” said Myrddin. “And not just for fighting with. They mean something. A sword thrust through a stone was the badge of Artorius Castus, who saved us from the Picts and Scots in olden times, and from whom our Arthur claims descent. The gods will send this sword to Arthur from the otherworld, to show that they love him as they loved the old Artorius.”

He was holding out the sword to me as if inviting me to touch it. I drew back.

“It has a name. Caliburn.”

“Is it really from the otherworld?”

“Of course not, child. I bought it from a trader down at Din Tagyll. But we can make men
think
it is from the gods.”

If I’d been a man, or even a boy, I might have said, “What do you mean, ‘we’? I want no part in enchantments.” But I was only Gwyna the Mouse. It was my lot to do as my elders told me, even if I didn’t understand.

Myrddin tousled my matted hair. “And maybe some god
is
watching over us,” he said. “Something sent you to me, that’s for sure. I had planned to have the Bear row out and find the sword on a ledge beneath that little waterfall, hid among the rushes there like Moses in his basket. Spin a story afterwards to explain it. But now I have a better notion. And now I have you, my little fish…”